Disclaimer, introduction and acknowledgements.
NOTE TO READERS: I would like to update this FAQ with WWW pointersfor the various Unices I mention. Don't hesitate to send them along,
I'll eventually get around to updating this part. Email: lew@bnr.ca
The following is offered with no guarantee as to accuracy or
completeness. I have done what I can in the time available,
often with conflicting information, and it still is very much work
in progress. I hope to keep improving this summary. Comments and
corrections welcome: lew@bnr.ca.
First a short definition. By Unix we mean an operating system
typically written in C, with a hierarchical file system,
integration of file and device I/O, whose system call interface
includes services such as fork(), pipe(), and whose user
interface includes tools such as cc, troff, grep, awk, and a
choice of shell. Note that UNIX was a registered trademark of USL
(AT&T), now of X/Open, but will be used here in its generic sense.
Most Unices (the more common plural form) are derived more or
less directly from AT&T (now Novell) code (some code from the first C
version is presumably still left in most), but there are also clones
(i.e. Unix-compatible systems with no AT&T code).
In addition, there are also Unix-like environments (e.g. VOS)
sitting on top of other OSs, and OSs inspired from Unix (yes,
even DOS!). These are not covered here. Little on real-time
Unices yet (although more is planned).
Unix comes in an incredible variety of flavors. This is to a
large extent due to availability of sources and the ease of
porting and modifying Unix. Typically, a vendor of Unix will
start with one basic flavor (see below), take ideas/code from the
other major flavor, add and change many things, etc. This
results in yet another new Unix flavor. Today, there are
literally hundreds of Unices available, the closest thing to
standard Unix being (by definition) System V.
This answer was put together mostly from information on the net
and email. Some specific sources are also mentioned in the
appropriate sections.
Acknowledgements: (in addition to references): pat@bnr.ca,
guy@auspex.com, pen@lysator.liu.se, mikes@ingres.com,
mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu, root%candle.uucp@ls.com, ee@atbull.bull.co.at,
Aaron_Dailey@stortek.com, ralph@dci.pinetree.org, sbdah@mcshh.hanse.de,
macmach@andrew.cmu.edu, jwa@alw.nih.gov [4.4BSD], roeber@axpvms.cern.ch,
bob@pta.pyramid.com.au, bad@flatlin.ka.sub.org, m5@vail.tivoli.com,
dan@fch.wimsey.bc.ca, jlbrand@uswnvg.com, jpazer@usl.com,
ym@satelnet.org, merritt@gendev.slc.paramax.com, quinlan@yggdrasil.com,
steve@rudolph.ssd.csd.harris.com, bud@heinous.isca.uiowa.edu,
pcu@umich.edu, quinlan@yggdrasil.com, Dan_Menchaca@quickmail.apple.com,
D.Lamptey@sheffield.ac.uk, derekn@vw.ece.cmu.edu, gordon@PowerOpen.org,
romain@pyramid.com, rzm@dain.oso.chalmers.se, chen@adi.com,
tbm@tci002.uibk.ac.at, sllewis@nando.net, edwin@modcomp.demon.co.uk,
many that I forgot, and all the other folks whose posts I read. Many
thanks!
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